The Prime of Miss M

In a few hours’ time, my best girlfriend Su will marry her boyfriend of eight years, in what looks set to be the grandest wedding of the year. Next to me, Sal murmurs, “Wow, she’s really gone all out for the reception, hasn’t she?”

I can only nod in agreement. The moment I had stepped into the reception area a few minutes ago, it had taken me a lot of effort to keep my jaw from falling to the ground. We were already giddy with anticipation from the moment she had informed us months ago, the location of where her wedding reception and dinner is to be held - Marriot Hotel.

“The perks of having a rich hubby,” Sal cheekily quips, her hands already poised on her camera to capture some shots of the beautifully designed reception area.

I myself proceed to take out my new digital camera, a Canon Digital IXUS 60 which had cost me an arm and leg before I could land my grubby paws on it. I love taking pictures on it; the clarity of the shots produced never cease to amaze me. I am certainly no expert when it comes to photography. In fact, I excel at taking grainy and blurred pictures with my old film camera. I am thus pleasantly surprised and pleased with the quality of the photos produced by my Canon IXUS. Ahhh, a gem definitely well worth its price.

I train the camera onto a staggering tower of roses draping beautifully on an erected pillar right next to the entrance for a practice shot. Just as my forefinger presses down on the shutter button (oh how I love these absolutely idiot-proof digital cameras), I feel a draft of strong wind rushing next to my right ear, startling me a bit. Did someone just blow into my ear?!

I look around me, but the nearest person to me is Sal, who is standing several feet away from I. I speculate silently, rubbing at my right ear somewhat shakily. Someone must have opened the door too quickly, causing a draft of wind to go my way. I look doubtfully at the door. Strange. How could I have missed the door opening and closing? I look at the image I had captured, expecting to see a blurred mess. No matter how good the camera is purported to be, I don’t expect the resulting image to survive that violent shaking.

To my surprise, a smiling man stares back at me on the LCD display. He is standing to the left of the pillar of roses with his hands casually folded in front of him. His entire profile has been taken slightly off-frame, with part of his body out of the picture. His face was caught fully however, so that I could make out most of his features quite clearly; a very straight nose with only a slight bump on its tip, full lips, dimpled chin, deepset eyes and arrow-straight eyebrows. His features suggests Eurasian blood. His smile is hauntingly familiar, and his expression seems to imply that he knows the photographer personally, in this case, me.

I quickly look up to confront the man who had so easily insinuated himself into my shot without my being aware of it. Only to find that he’s already gone.

My friend loves to put me down; she picks out all the little faults that add up to the person that is I, and has no qualms about regaling a crowd of people with “amusing anecdotes” about my idiosyncracies.

My friend seldom compliments or congratulates me, whether or not the occasion really warrants it, but when the rare compliment or “well-done” does go my way, it almost always come with a snide comment to squish any good feeling it might have aroused.

My friend has disgusting habits; she spits into sinks in public toilets and then walks away. She litters if she knows she can get away with it. And yet, in a fantastic display of hypocrisy, she prissily complains of others’ habits.

My friend throws a fit when I have to cancel plans to meet up with her, even if the cancellation is done days ahead. Even when I had to cancel because I was sick, or my Mom was sick, or when my experiments were running late and I couldn’t leave the lab in time cos giving up at that point would be ridiculously stupid since I had already spent many days on them.

My friend publicly berates me on her blog on the occasion I’ve wronged her Majesty, even though I think anyone else with a smidgen of E.Q would at least have the basic courtesy to talk it out face-to-face first before bitching about someone they call their friend publicly on their blog.

My friend is extremely thick-skinned, to the point that she happily “forgets” to repay her debts to friends, and have no qualms about asking for treats. She also sees nothing wrong in getting guys to buy her expensive things, and does not return them when she breaks up with them.

My friend steals from me, and suffers no guilt even when she saw that I was half-mad with distress after losing all my important cards and cash. My friend steals from me, again and again.

My friend talks about me behind my back, but that is fine, since what she says about me is a reflection of her own insecurities and jealousy. Still, this knowledge makes me distrust her that much more.

My friend will no longer be my friend, once I’ve mustered enough courage to tell her so.

A new blog, a new beginning.

I think I’ll keep mom about this blog for a while more. I’m still unhappy with my layout, my pages aren’t done up nicely yet, but most importantly, I have yet to decide on the direction this blog’s heading towards. I already have another blog for me to post on my everyday musings (read: whine and gripe); in fact, I think I have way too many blogs already. Name me a blogging platform, and I’m likely to have tried it. With this blog though, I initially had lofty visions of it being a platform upon which I can share with the rest of the world engaging discourses on various topics (I’m not even going to pretend I’m in the know with current affairs), interesting short stories or prose (last time I wrote a PROPER short story was back in secondary school though), and my all-time love affair with books. In short, this blog was meant to be a geeky blog. I’m not sure if I can see all these through though, cos all my writings tend to spiral down to ranting sessions despite my attempts in serious writing. Heh.

But I love to write, and in this blog, write I will. =) Expect silly short stories (I already have some stories in the make, I’ll just have to muster up enough courage to put them up here ), issues on religion, culture and gender (my pet topics), book reviews by the gallon (I hope. Work leaves little energy for late night reading), and also some chronicles in the life of a twenty-something year old girl who has little better to do than to indulge in her love of writing.

- Miss M